SAN JOSE, Calif. — will join Google in defying Chinese censorship rules, telling a congressional panel that it will host no new websites with “” domain names rather than continuing to comply with requirements to furnish the government with personal information about its Chinese customers.
Saying the company hosts many individual websites considered politically sensitive by Beijing, Christine Jones, general counsel and corporate secretary of Go Daddy Group, on Wednesday told members of the Congressional-Executive Commission on China that the government had recently added new requirements that the Scottsdale, Ariz., company turn over personal data, including a photo, of all its Chinese customers.
“This was a decision we made in our own right, based on our experience of having to contact Chinese nationals, collect their personal information and return that information to the government,” Jones told the panel, which is chaired by Sen. Byron Dorgan, D-N.D. “We made a decision we didn’t want to act as an agent for the Chinese government.”
A Google executive, Alan Davidson, told the commission that Google services ranging from searches to YouTube are now being filtered or blocked by more than 25 countries.
Google noticed a surge in government censorship in China beginning late last year, Davidson said, adding that other countries have recently blocked or filtered YouTube because their governments objected to uploaded political videos.
